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Getting traffic in the door…

It may be the most difficult part of the foodservice game, and the ways to make it happen are rapidly changing. While word-of-mouth is still the reigning champion in promoting your business, the forms that it comes in varies greatly. Twitter, Facebook, Google+, YouTube, Blogger, and many others are encroaching on the physical person-to-person discussion of where to eat. The greatest benefit of these new digital communications is that you can often drop in on the conversation.

If you have great food, you’re already in a prime position to tap into this discussion and further promote your business – chances are, plenty of people are talking about you already. The digitized world is big, though, and it might be hard to know where to start. Let’s break it down by service, arranged by how important we think they are to your foodservice operation.

1. Twitter

Twitter is a premier tool to engage with your audiences, and with good reason. With instant responses that can spread through the Twittersphere, your name can be broadcast loud and clear through the internet. It goes without saying that you need to be short and to the point, but being clever and current doesn’t hurt, either. To get people to follow you, you need to follow them first; if they don’t follow back within a few days, unfollow them and try somebody else. A good goal is to have slightly more followers than people you follow, but it takes some work to get there.
It’s easy to get started, just visit Twitter and you just need to provide a name, email, and password.

2. Facebook

The key here is contests and engagement. If you offer a free appetizer coupon for a limited time to people who “like” your page, you’re going to be in for a treat yourself. Ruby Tuesday offered 100,000 free burgers by liking their Facebook page and, as of today, they have over 500,000 followers. That’s a lot of exposure, and even if every single free burger was given away, there’s still money to be made – people tend to bring their friends and will certainly buy some appetizers, sides, and drinks. Make sure you are visiting those who “like” your page and thank them personally. Do this until the volume of likes far exceeds your capacity to personally thank each Facebook friend, and you’re well on your way to creating a viral effect.
Starting a Facebook page is simple. Go to Facebook’s Create A Page portion of their site, choose Local Business or Place, and it’s easy as pie from there on out.

3. YouTube

This is probably the most rewarding outlet in social media; since videos generally have a higher production value compared to the snippets of conversation within other media outlets, they tend to get more attention. Add some behind-the-scenes videos, recipes, or footage from special events. You don’t even need to invest in much; just a Flip camera or similar will do fine, and free editing software such as Windows Movie Maker will do for most operations. If you have the budget, the better your videos are, the more attention they seem to accumulate. Keep adding videos every once in a while to keep your channel fresh and leverage your other social media outlets to drive views and interest.
Signing up is simple: visit YouTube, and you can either sign in with an existing Google account, or just give an email, username, and password and you’re in.

4. Google+

The new kid on the block is quickly becoming the gorilla in the room. Since, as of right now, Google+ is an invite-only platform, and they don’t have any tools for business, you’re best hope is to use your operation’s Google account to engage users as an unbranded “friend,” and hope that they add you to some well-populated circles. The flip-side of the Google+ coin is the user-generated promotion of your site through what Google calls their “+1 Button.” Similar to Facebook’s “like” button, it generates interest and puts your restaurant’s site nearer to the top of the list when people search for places to eat on Google.Signing up for Google+ is as easy as finding someone who will email you an invite. To do this, appeal to friends, family, and customer’s to see if any of them have invites. To add the +1 button to you’re website, go to Google’s site to get the code. If you’re still new to site development and coding, have your website’s team do it for you, or your neighbor’s kid.

5. LinkedIn

Often viewed as a site to boost your resume, LinkedIn actually has useful tools to keep you connected with colleagues and other business owners. If you’re in the foodservice industry, you know there is plenty of healthy competition, but plenty of friendships as well. As you foster these relationships, you may find strength in numbers.
Visit Linked In and put in your first and last name, your email, and a password and you’re well on your way.

6. Your Own Site

This is an oft-overlooked tool in your arsenal. The most important part reason for having your own site is that you ultimately determine the content and how it is formatted. Put up your menu, daily deals, and push your Facebook and Twitter. Just having a website adds legitimacy to your business and makes customer’s who are looking to try something new visit you in-person; however, having a well-designed and often-updated website can really sway a customer’s decision to choose you over the competition.
You can make your own site, even if you are not a web guru. If you visit a hosting platform such as GoDaddy, you can buy a domain, get hosting, and design a basic site all in one day. If you don’t have the time to make your own site, there are plenty of web design companies who will take care of all the nerdy tech stuff for you. Do a search to find reputable ones in your area.

7. Groupon

Groupon offers daily deals to a rich database of consumers; they might offer a coupon for $30 worth of product at your establishment for as little as $10. That $10 profit is then split between your business and Groupon. It’s much pricier than many of the other social media tools, but the turnout is hard to beat. Just make sure you’re ready for the rush, and you can financially support such a loss-leader. The Groupon folks will push you to drive your prices down to nearly nothing, so go into negotiations with a set percentage off that you are willing to settle for. Also, be honest about your chances that this will result in repeat business – will folks come back for more after the initial coupons are used?
Visit Groupon Works for more information about how it works, and then go to the Get Featured section of Groupon’s site to apply as a business. The bar to get featured is actually pretty high, you’ll need to provide information about your business such as your reviews on Yelp! and City Search (if any).

8. Business Review Sites

We decided to lump these all together. This includes City Search and Merchant Circle, among others. Usually, these sites will allow users to add business themselves, so chances are, you’re already on there. Job well done, right? Not quite. Often, you will want to provide additional information that reviewers have not added yet – your menu, average price of food, business hours, additional pictures. The best part about these sites are that people on them are generally genuinely looking for a place to eat; it’s free advertising! The downside is that even a few negative reviews can affect your restaurant’s business. Often, you are able to respond to customer complaints on these sites, so it is good form to professionally apologize for any inconveniences caused by your establishment and offer for them to try you again (and you may entice them with a free drink or similar). For every customer that puts the effort into adding a review, there are often hundreds who are just looking – it’s important to keep up appearances for those potential customers.
As noted before, you are probably already listed. Visit Google Places, Yelp!, Yahoo, Urban Spoon, and the others to make sure you are listed and reviewed well.

9. Blogging

Though we nearly ironically made a blog post about this in the past, it’s important enough of a point to be made again. If you feel as though you have the time and the content to update a blog on daily basis, you need to start one. If you have your own website (and you should), WordPress offers an easy way to start blogging once it’s installed. In all reality, it’s the only way to go as far as blogging is concerned. It’s free, updated constantly to keep pace with current technology, it’s simple to use, and versatile.
Just visit WordPress’s site and check out their Famous Five Minute install. If you have any questions, visit our past blog about the subject for more info.

10. Email

Email may be on the back burner in the minds of social media gurus, but it is still a force to be reckoned with. Nearly everyone with access to the internet has an email account. Even if all of the other ways of contacting your customers over the internet fail, if you have an in-store sign asking customer’s to sign up for your email marketing campaign in exchange for a free dessert, you are sure to pick up some of the less technically savvy customers you miss with your other online marketing campaigns.
While you can run an email campaign all by yourself, it can become tiresome coming up with new ideas and adhering to good formatting rules. Companies like Constant Contact will help lighten the load for campaigns such as these, for a small monthly fee.

It looks like you have some homework to do! Keeping up on all of these communication outlets can prove time consuming, but if you want to improve foot traffic, they can be a boon to your restaurant business.

Offering More Than Delicious Food from a Truck

Now that I’m a believer, I want to experience everything that Orlando Foodtrucks have to offer- one meal at a time. My experience last week with the Korean BBQ Taco Box (@koreanbbq_2011) was amazing, but I’ve decided to venture out a little bit further (quite literally a block further up University Blvd.) and try some other trucks. Before leaving for lunch last Wednesday, I checked twitter and found that The Crooked Spoon (@TheCrookedSpn) and Mobile Deli (@ilovemobiledeli)were going to be serving at the Citgo on the corner of University Blvd and Metric in the Fullsail area. Perfect. Everything I’ve seen on line so far has given these two trucks nothing but stellar reviews. They were right.

After looking at some pics on The Crooked Spoon’s Facebook page, I was dead set on trying their Mac & Cheese while my coworker Jared wanted a Bistro Ham sandwich. Oh, man were they good. I’m not a food critic or foodie by any means- I don’t even play one on TV- but this was some of the best Macaroni and Cheese I have ever had. You definitely need it in your life.

The Snaps:

Though the food is amazing…

The coolest thing about The Crooked Spoon is how friendly they are and their understanding of social networking. The foodservice industry is plagued with restaurants and manufacturers that just don’t get it when it comes to Facebook or Twitter. I guess that’s why I’ve taken such a liking to the food truck movement; it appreciates and embraces the relationships that social media can build for small businesses. I was thoroughly impressed with The Crooked Spoon when they were willing to just hang out and talk social media/ SMM shop with me while my order was prepared. Like I said before, the food was amazing- but it was their candor and willingness to connect (even in person) that went a long way with me.

Check out The Crooked Spoon on Twitter (@TheCrookedSpn)and get them on Facebook to connect. If you’re looking for their next location or evening foodpod, their twitter is probably your best bet. You won’t be disappointed.

If you own or operate a food truck in Orlando and you’re reading this, get with me on twitter (@REWonline). In the very near future, I would love to come out and talk to you about your food truck operation. We can make a quick video and upload it to youtube, or I can write up an article about your food/story for our blog. No sales pitches, I promise.

By Brad Pierce, President Restaurant Equipment World

Despite the advent of Facebook, Twitter and other social media platforms, e-mail marketing still delivers a very solid ROI and isn’t going to fall by the wayside anytime soon. While social media provides phenomenal marketing opportunities, the volume of content makes it easy for your message to get lost in the clutter. This is where e-mail marketing shines – it’s delivered directly to customers’ desktops or mobile devices and claims their attention long enough for equipment suppliers to entice them to absorb your message.

The first step to ensuring a good response to your e-mail marketing is to make sure operators actually get your message and it’s not filtered as spam. This is where a solid e-mail marketing company comes into play. Don’t skimp in this area; choose a provider who has trusted relationships with ISPs ensuring their e-mail communications are white-listed.

So, you’ve gotten your message past the spam filter, but now what? You literally only have a fraction of a second to engage or lose your recipients. This is where good copyrighting of your subject line comes into play. You need to entice your customer to click on your e-mail to view it, rather than having them click the delete button. A message’s subject needs to be interesting, concise and, most of all, relevant to recipients’ needs. The biggest mistake marketers make in this area is delivering a great subject line that generates interest, only to have the content of their messages differ greatly from what customers thought it would be about. Quite simply, don’t do it. It’s not worthwhile to burn away trust with your customers, many of whom will likely unsubscribe.

Now that you’ve gained your customers attention, your focus can shift to the actual content of your message. Just like with the subject line, you need to once again engage your customers quickly. They’re likely going to only give your message a quick glace before deciding whether to read the full content or go on to the next message. This should be done by presenting an easy-to-read headline that grabs customers’ attention. In the case of restaurant promotions, pictures with big bold text announcing your promotion are the best way to get people to read further. In the case of e-newsletters, the best examples I’ve seen have a concise listing of the topics covered in each issue so that readers can quickly decide if a particular newsletter is of interest to them.

The bottom line is that e-mail marketing can be very effective and can have a very solid ROI. Just remember, the key is always clear communication, engagement, honesty and being attentive to the fact you’ve only got a fraction of a second to grab your customers’ attention during each step of the process.

By Brad Pierce, President Restaurant Equipment World

There’s a line from the movie Field of Dreams that goes, “If you build it, they will come.” While this may be true for a ballpark, it couldn’t be further from the truth when it comes to a foodservice equipment supplier’s web site.

This is the reality I know all too well personally. After spending months developing my company’s first site, I eagerly looked at the visitor logs a few weeks after it went live. To my shock, I had attracted a total of 10 visitors, nine of which I’m quite sure were family members. I realized that I needed to do some promotion quickly or the world wouldn’t know about the great content I had developed. The tools have changed since those early days of the web, but the premise is the same: You must get out there and promote your site to make it successful so that operators can find you and the equipment you’re promoting.

Ensuring that your site is listed with the Google and Bing search engines is essential, but this process can be time consuming as you work to gain relevant rankings and is often competitive and costly, especially if you’re using these companies’ paid advertising services. Starting a company blog on the other hand and syndicating your content to the blog search engines is, however, a quick and inexpensive way to start getting your name and site out there.

News releases can also work well, especially if they’re distributed via one of the many established online press release agencies. One caveat is to ensure that the information being presented in your release is relevant and interesting to readers. Sure, it’s alright to toot your own horn to attract operators or promote your equipment, but be sure to spell out the value you’re actually providing and why it’s relevant to them or it’s likely to be dismissed as a sales pitch disguised as a press release.

Lastly, foodservice equipment dealers need to engage in social media networking. Start with Facebook and Twitter, since those have a minimal barrier to entry and the largest audience sizes. Don’t just head right into promoting your site, however, or you’ll likely be blocked by people instantly. Instead, engage in the ongoing discussions, form personal relationships and get to know your existing and potential operator-customers Once you’ve established trust, then — and only then — should equipment dealers promote your brand and products, and ask operators to visit your site. Before you know it, they will come to see what you’ve built — and they’ll bring their colleagues and business associates with them, as well.

by Kaila Colbin

Am I the only one who finds it difficult to manage multiple accounts, multiple admins, and multiple campaigns online? Surely not.

Facebook used to live at the inconvenient extreme of making it impossible to remove the originating Page admin, implying that no mere successor admin could ever be trustworthy enough to carry the mantle forward. Now they’ve boomeranged to requiring a nearly saintly level of trust in each and every Page admin, any disgruntled one of whom can remove all the others and destroy your company’s reputation with a few judiciously placed comments and inappropriate pics. Really, Facebook? There’s no middle ground between the power to post a status update and the power to stage an online coup d’etat?

And, while we’re at it, why are Page ads linked to people and not Pages? The whole point of a Page is to give your company an online presence, right? So let me get this straight: if the gal running the ads gets hit by a bus, nobody else can access the ads. (I’m talking AFTER visiting her in the hospital — I’m not completely heartless!) Heck, all she has to do is take a week off and the system grinds to a halt.

Maybe right now you’re all, “No problem, dude; just make a business account.” But no. Technically you’re not allowed to create a business account unless you don’t have a personal profile. So the guy with the business account — the one you’re trusting to manage your Facebook ad presence — is so social-media-savvy that he doesn’t even have a personal profile. And since technically a business account is only supposed to belong to one person, it doesn’t solve the problem anyway.

So the guy with the business account — the one you’re trusting to manage your Facebook ad presence — is so social-media-savvy that he doesn’t even have a personal profile.Kaila Colbin –
A Little Administrative Rant

At least Google allows multiple admins on AdWords accounts. But what they don’t allow is single administrative access for multiple YouTube accounts. I have a personal one, and four business ones, and for each one I have to remember what unique blimmin’ email/password combo I used for it. Seriously, imagine if this happened in the real world. You’re a freelancer, but you have to use a different name and cell phone for each client. PLUS I have to log out of Gmail so it doesn’t automatically read the stupid cookies and try to be helpful. You’re not helpful, Gmail. You want to be helpful? Give me a Master Admin page on YouTube and let me choose which account to manage.

Speaking of not helpful, try logging into New Twitter, which jovially announces, “Everything in one place!” (The cheerfulness is reminiscent of the excessively happy Eddie the Shipboard Computer from “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy”: “Hi there. This is Eddie, your shipboard computer, and I’m feeling just great, guys, and I know I’m just going to get a bundle of kicks out of any program you care to run through me.”) The reality, of course, is that “everything” is almost entirely unlike being in one place. If I want to manage multiple Twitter accounts — for, say, personal and professional purposes — I’m going through a third-party app, not logging in and out every time I need to switch persona. Incidentally, the fact that pretty much every third-party app offers this functionality shows that it’s not that hard, is it?

The folks who run these services are collectively some of the brightest people on the planet, and have collectively managed to influence our culture more dramatically over a shorter period of time than perhaps any other group in history, so please don’t take this article as a sign of disrespect. It’s just a plea: Look at us. Look at how we use these services. There are a lot of small things you can do that will make our lives so much easier.

Do you share my frustration? Am I being ridiculous? Let me know either way, in the comments or via @kcolbin. And thank you for putting up with this small interruption.

If you want to connect with us as well as @kcolbin, get us on our Twitter @REWonline.